It was only supposed to be a couple of days; time enough to check out the temple you’d read about, pick up some bargains in the market, and mosey round the town before you head off to the next stop on your travels.

Have you ever arrived at a hotel to discover that the ‘sea view’ room you fell head over heels for online doesn’t actually exist? Or examined a restaurant bill only to find it includes items that you never ordered?

Perhaps your experiences seem less melodramatic than this. But if you’ve spent any length of time living out of a backpack or a suitcase, there’s a fair chance you’ve chalked up one, some or perhaps many of a traveller’s classic rites of passage.

In the list below, we share 26 road-tested travel tips. As Bilbo Baggins famously warned, ‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door’; follow this A to Z of timeless travel advice to keep the chaos to a minimum.